Once upon a time a man decided he would become respectable among fellow men [and women: after all most Malawian men pursue wealth in order to ‘peacock’ before women. Food and health comes a far cry last]. So he went about joining what, in other parts of Africa, they call the wabenzi tribe.
Upon acquiring sufficient sacrifice, he duly trekked to one of our neighboring countries—renowned for its well developed motor assembly industry—whereupon he purchased for himself a ‘reasonably used German machine'.
Once back home, he proceeded to perform the required African peacock dance; including driving his gleaming machine in the fast lane at no more than ten kilometers-an-hour. This, he would habitually do at the height of the flash rush hours; typical of our fuel-starved economy. He needed to be noticed and what better way but inconvenience everyone; including the very female tribes he presumably worked to impress!
Finally, the time arrived—not when he had to court a woman of his heart’s desire—but to take the vehicle in for its mandatory ‘downtime’. So, he spankingly dressed himself up; just in case some ‘wabenzi weak-kneed’ tribes would be lurking there.
At the dealer’s place he was received with the appropriate aplomb; while he pranced in perfect reciprocity. Meanwhile, the dealer ordered the vehicle be taken to the service pits and receive a perfect wash before the check etc.
After the extended waiting time, the assigned mechanic returned; carrying an unexpectedly sour face. He invited aside the dealer—who until now had been outdoing himself serving English Tea to the wabenzi. The mechanic whispered into the dealer’s ear. What followed can only be described as comical.
The dealer literary snatched the cup of tea from off the wabenzi’s lips and asked him, rather brusquely, if he could try the cheaper Japanese dealer in another part of town! It was a dumbfounded wabenzi who learned that the German machine with which he had so far caused a not-so-limited steer had been ‘unscrupulously’ fitted with a Japanese engine! The things our richer neighbors visit on poor us!
I will leave it to another blog to argue how reverse engineering and the court cases between the German and the Japanese car makers—over who owns what part and where in their cars—have come to wreck havoc in our lives. The thing has since cancerously spread to even simple boxes of matches: fitted with what you did not order! Everyone is playing with everyone’s brand names and the end victim, of course, is carelessly poor you and I!
Meantime, the moral of the ‘wabenzi’ intro is to tell you about ‘economic engines’. Yes, just like a car an economy needs an engine. It is so obvious, isn’t? Yet during several public presentations, I have witnessed quite a few surprised faces in the audience upon mentioning ‘economic engine’ and their need in a national economy. Who needs bother with ‘economic engines’ when the economy is already there? Is it because I would be stating the obvious? Is it because it is such an obvious thing and we have taken it for granted for so long? Indeed, even our economic planners and developers have gone mechanistic on this pertinent question building economies and whole agglomerations of ‘new towns’ without even wondering as to what ‘engines’ of growth are needed to sustain the fellow human beings they would be carelessly thrusting into these 'human wildernesses'. For whatever faults it carried, I must admit, in choosing ISI [Import Substitution Industrialization] Kamuzu did ‘uninformedly’ give some thought to what ‘economic engine’ he preferred for Malawi. Not many, thereafter, have exposed their grey matter to this issue.
Specifically, an economy [in this case the vehicle chassis] needs an engine to power itself forward [or in reverse it if one is into weird driving approaches!] More importantly, I am pointing out that there are economic engines and then there are economic engines! Naturally, one has to know this. Otherwise when next you open the bonnet of your national economy don’t be surprised to discover there is a dead donkey lurking in there! Unfortunately, this is the problem with most African economies. For the last few decades their leaders and nationals have been busy carving up the dead donkeys in their economic bonnets and mistakenly calling such futile pursuits 'economic development'.
Of course, most African economies have proved to be funny ‘animals’: capable of running without economic engines; more so after that World Bank/IMF economic castration exercise called ‘Structural Adjustment Programs’ [SAP]. Indeed, for most of us—the non-inquisitive types—we have come to confuse such ‘conceptual impossibility’ as the reality and every day fact. Therefore, we would be forgiven for wondering aloud: ‘how else could a whole nation sit around claiming to be a nation when it has hardly anything of economic value about which it mulls or whiles its valuable time?’ ‘Don’t we wake up every day and go to work? What is that all about?’
Work! You call what you do 'work'? I dare ask. Ever heard of a man who 'worked hard at nothing'? As Africans we have been specialists at applying ourselves at absolutely nothing! In a tongue-in-cheek story I once described the chicanery of a mangy dog that viciously guarded over the rotting contents of its master’s dustbin. Somehow, the dog expected—upon the master’s return—to be rewarded for such futility! Look around you: don’t we have such African dustbin economies and their mangy dogs?
What is in question here is our ability to rise above the mangy dog capability to interrogate the rotting things we call ‘economic engines’. Better yet, can we find the wherewithal in terms of how revitalizing the rotting economic contents in our national dustbins? Even more challenging can we throw out the rot and insert fresh and inviting economic engines into our national economic bonnets? To do that, of course, one needs, first, to know how to differentiate between engines, their functions and where they get put into a car!
For example, there are too many cities in Malawi running around without even dead donkeys in their hoods. Some, for the search of a better cliché, we could call ‘dormitory towns’. But even that is a bender effort because the last time I checked: a boarding school has a ‘dormitory’ section because it has ‘classrooms’. Classrooms are why it is a school! Therefore, a ‘dormitory town’ would invariably need some classrooms: in this case some economic purposes. Generally—if you are mercantilist enough—i.e. as per J. Michael Friend in my earlier blog—the classroom or economic purpose must honestly form part of an export value-chain. This is because only foreign 'revenue-earning' objectives count as economic purpose or the [1] ‘art of pushing one’s thieving hand into your neighbor’s pocket while working hard to remove his thieving hand from your pockets’. Anything else—such as [2] pushing one’s thieving hand into your other pocket while leaving your neighbor’s thieving hand in the other pocket—is as stupid as the word can be stretched. Now, find me any town in Malawi—including the one you live in and the job or work you do everyday—that approximates [1] above. If your preoccupation nears the art in [2] above you are a rent-seeker through-and through and thus you live in a dormitory without the requisite classrooms! Yet—because we are not that inquisitive [remember the wabenzi never checked on what he was buying!] to ensure our economic systems have any revenue-earning engines—we prance around making unfounded claims about being busy. ‘Busy at doing what?’ Can you call running around—better the mangy dog had the presence of mind to lie beside the dustbin and conserve energy—wasting energy at nothing, ‘useless’ work or developing the ‘absentee economic engine’ in this national system? The saddest part is we don’t even know how economic engines look like!
Imagine the blank face I got from a certain senior civil servant when I asked him to tell me:
'What is the economic engine of Lilongwe City?’
‘Capital Hill, of course!’ A few others have subsequently responded to me—with such straight faces that had suggested it was me who had mucus accidentally smeared all over my face.
When I have countered: ‘But, Capital Hill is not Lilongwe's economic engine…’ And proceeded to explain through a simile: ‘That amounts to inviting Jay-Z [the American Rap Singer] into Lilongwe for a series of cabarets at Capital Hotel and then telling everyone—as crowds of youths flock to the hotel, night in night out—that he [Jay-Z] is Lilongwe’s economic engine’.
There will be lot of business, alright, while Jay-Z is in town. It could be a week or, if you are old enough: remember the ‘OK Success Band’ from Zimbabwe? Those guys took months touring Malawi; with everybody flock behind them while our MBC Band performed to empty halls! Finally, the politicians—that too marked the beginning of the 'machona-hating' practice among local and mediocre Malawians—had to be called in to throw OK Success out of Malawi.
But their departure did not render 'rent-seeking' MBC Band an economic engine? Did people flock to see them? Otherwise Maria Chidzanja Nkhoma would be, today, more popular than the 'exportable' Miriam Makeba. In there is a lesson on our ability to differentiate between an 'economic engine' and an 'economic competence'. I will leave full definitions to another blog. Suffice for me to say: a ‘competence’ is a 'skill' of some sort. Unfortunately, most people confuse mere competences—localized and generally rent-seeking skills—for economic engines. A personal competence—your ability to wake up and go to this ‘job’ you go to everyday and expertly perform the tasks therein despite that you are hacking at the wrong and irrelevant national wicket—is not an 'economic competence' and may actually harm the effective workings a sound national economic engine somewhere. That then amount to working at nothing!
Indeed—to belabor the point—since government conferencing in the lakeshore was banned Mangochi and other towns along the lake are reportedly dying. This suggests that ‘one off-events’ can indeed serve as local economic engines or put better local competences. A fine tuned assemblage of local competences—all leading to a perfect and mercantilist ‘thieving’ strategy—can result in an economic engine!
The caveat though is not to confuse economic sophistication—for example the difference between a commodity economy and one at the height of the service industry revolution—for an economic engine. At least that is what I thought until Wassily Leontief told me that the USA—the most developed service industry economy—relies on export of labor [attached to goods and services] to remain the superpower it is!
'Wassily, how do you attach labor to goods and services?' I wondered at first. It is done through industry, of course. The tussle between USA and China is about China dribbling away American opportunities to attach labor to exports!
In other words, beneath the spit and shine of a 'German road machine' invariably operates a dirty and hardworking engine! Capitalism—the shiny part of the car—is a result of a weeklong of cleaning and burnishing the system. Capitalist begins where the dirty parts end. Capitalism is the ‘partying’ and consumptive spending that we all pine for in our national system but only starts when the dirty part is functional. ‘Sunday’ stands for 'sun day': the time to rest from the grime; the time to rest the ‘thieving fingers’ in your neighbor’s pocket. According to Leontief, this is the ‘wealth transfer’—when what has been ‘thieved’ must be stored away from the sight of the victim. It is the tip of a deep lain iceberg. Capitalism is the ‘dormitory’ part after the classes have been attended. In other words, you cannot have Capitalism without dirt and grime—the national industry and/ or economic engine to ‘sustains’ it.
Therefore, Capital Hill is a service industry—a 'sun day' tip [the dormitory], the Capitalist tip of an iceberg deep seated elsewhere. It is the seat of government—the wealth transfer point for the whole of Malawi. Therefore it is not the economic engine of Lilongwe. The Asian shops in Old Town, the emerging shopping malls and Capital Hill itself are the Capitalist dormitories, the leisure points or local competences in support of an economic engine somewhere.
Put graphically, it is the ‘Jay-Z-type’ center-of-attraction. It is the Mecca of nearly 200,000 Malawians who look for their monthly income and sustenance from there. But, it is an ephemeral form of economic engine—a competence. Jay-Z may sing and crowds love him. But it is the crew behind him that makes for his success during the money spinning cabarets. These people are the Jay-Z engine.
Now, here is the confusing part for most Malawians: where we have been failing to achieve effective economic structuring of our economy. What would happen on a night Jay-Z developed a mysterious sore throat and crowds are sent back disappointed; probably never to return again?
‘Then, it has to be Kanengo!’ the triumphant response to realization has invariably followed my rather windy challenge. But, this is quickly replaced by smug looks when it occurs to these people that the tobacco era, that had sustained Kanengo—a mere logistical competence in an economic engine somewhere—had since developed a Jay-Z-like sore throat. Kanengo was never the engine after all!
Some definitions are now in order. What is an ‘engine’? In the wabenzi example above, it is the highly efficient mechanical system that powers the car forward. Before combustion engines, human labor [go to Chipande Old Post Office on Zomba Road learn how Malawians used to carry the colonialist around ‘pamachila’] was the logistical engines. Then, came the donkey; but it was too slow and was replaced by the horse. But the fellow needed to stop for pasture or prepare his own lunch by the roadside while the ‘bwana’ sat in the back seat digesting the meal he had eaten at the hotel! So, the combustion engine took over. However, if you look at the fuel queues outside your office window, you have to wonder if engines are still worth their while! Is fuel the engine now and what of the gearbox? Where does that fit in the need to imbue economic engine speed variability?
To this day, the performance capacity or power of a car’s engine is still measured in terms of the 'number of equivalent' horses that could comfortably pull that chassis. Less horses, less performance; more horses more output: now we turbo charge the engines too! German chassis—before they ostensively went environmental—were generally elegant and thus heavy. Hence, they needed more horses to pull; thus more expensive. The Japanese picked the car manufacturing competence upon which to build their economic engine. They adopted a specific industrial policy that aimed at offering cars that delivered ‘good performance at the lowest possible price’. However, clever guys sometimes fit cheap engines into expensive chassis. And unsuspecting Malawian pretenders pay for these; only to look stupid later! The saddest part is that for the last forty-seven years, Malawi has been running an expensive car with no economic engine or wherewithal to fashion a suitable one. And we persevere in similar futility.
Whichever way, economies need engines and these have to be rated at certain capabilities and/ or horse power. In economics, though, the ‘horsepower’ is not usually about road speed and/or output per se. It is about the ability for that economic system to 'sustainably' sustain the livelihoods of the people in it. So the Capital Hill argument has some sense in it. But is it fair to say just because it sustains people’s livelihoods then Capital Hill is an economic engine? This is where we have been busy at nothing; confusing some things for what they are not and building whole edificial dreams over nothing. The vexing questions are: how long can the Capital Hill sustain itself if the rest of the economy is not sustainably structured? How far can a donkey pull a fully loaded 30 ton freightliner? The answer is: not very far if anywhere. Capital Hill is another Jay-Z; highly susceptible to ‘sore throat’ affliction. It is an institution build on the assumed permanency of a viable economic system elsewhere. To use the car example Capital Hill is exactly that: a ‘steering wheel’. It is ephemeral and/ or peripheral. Future science is already talking of computer-steered cars; leaving the occupants to watch television rather than watching the road ahead! Globalization sometimes boasts of the rise of ‘Stateless Economies’
Of course, ephemeral is a related opposite of permanency. Yet, the latter is a matter of degree; just as dying is in degrees. Some people die after a short illness. Others—seriously ill and detracting the healthy ones from achieving their best—just hang about forever driven by some indefinable bodily constitution and stupid survival power. Indeed, euthanasia—the painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable and painful disease… [Wikipedia.com: dictionary]—is increasingly a public debate in certain societies. Is ‘economic euthanasia’ fair ground for similar debate in Malawi?
This is so given there are certain economies that are so economically perfection-challenged or sub-optimally designed that keeping them alive is like retaining a comatose vegetable into posterity. Such systems have been allowed to linger rather too long because the owners and residents therein have confused their ‘cabbage-like’ existence for life itself or mistaken the fact that they haven’t died yet for the possible availability of some form of a sustainable economic engine therein.
Here in Malawi we have the additional problem that we confuse ‘consumptive living’ with success and happiness. Our lives are no more different from that enjoyed by the WENELA guys of the late 1970s. They would trek to the mines, bring back a bicycle and/or a Gumba-gumba, party off the proceeds and trek back to Wenela! They were merely 'sun day-ing' their lives. In the manner the Malawian economy is currently designed—inappropriately structured—we have become specialists at Capitalist 'sun day' pursuit throughout the week without the requisite economic engine to sustain such ‘partying’. We are competent at 'going to the office'/ to 'the job' without asking: which 'job'? Is our job related and/ or support the 'Capitalist Grime’ section or the Capitalist 'sun day section' and which 'economic engine' does it underpin?
What a depressing thought to realize one has been 'working hard at nothing'! Is it possible Malawi is an agglomeration of pseudo-economic activities lacking perfect economic purpose? Why? Is it because we have confused these for viable entities or because no one has dared to question their structural composition and/ or propose a ‘perfecting solution’—provide veritable economic engines?
But the chickens must come to roost. Now, we are at a stage when the world around us proposes we use Aunt Tiwo and Uncle Chimbalanga as our viable assemblages of economic well being. We also face the threat of a world keener to apply thoughts of euthanasia to our national shores—not to 'see off' our unfortunate Malawian folks—but to pull the plug on our very 'directionless' economic system. These are thoughts and hard choices before us.
However, there are also alternatives. We could start looking for veritable economic engines—from geographical accidents [highly ephemeral and short-term] or within ourselves [see the YAMBAKATA blog for opportunities at developing Exportable Human Software] as well as elsewhere. It is our responsibility to ensure the proud Malawi we love takes a new, high and successful road to personal competence exploitation premised and/ or underpinning properly defined economic engines!
The author can also be contacted at zivaiclaude@gmail.com
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